


i think i'll die alone inside my room

by mdizzee



Series: stills from the island [1]
Category: The Wilds (TV 2020)
Genre: 1x04, AND ITS AMAZING, Angst, Character Study, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, Heavy Angst, Internalized Homophobia, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Sexual Tension, Toni Centric, Unresolved Sexual Tension, but in this they just hate each other, give this girl a hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:08:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28399734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mdizzee/pseuds/mdizzee
Summary: The way she sees it, the world has dealt her a lousy hand and she’ll deal back to it what it deserves.In which Toni has a unique propensity for ruining good things (and Shelby does real, okay?)
Relationships: Shelby Goodkind/Toni Shalifoe
Series: stills from the island [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2064456
Comments: 5
Kudos: 104





	i think i'll die alone inside my room

**Author's Note:**

> The line 'I do real, okay 🙄😠? I do family 👨👩👧👦, I do Jesus 🙇♀️, I do pageants 💁' is so unbelievably funny. Mia Healey deserves an Oscar for delivering that with a straight face and also for looking up to the sky when she says Jesus 😭😭.
> 
> Based on the events of 1x04; an angsty, dramatic character exploration of Toni because I love her

The way she sees it, the world has dealt her a duff hand and she’ll deal back to it what it deserves.

Her life has felt like a slow, inescapable descent. Her father dies first, then her mother starts to love heroin more than she loves her, then she’s fostered by a family that definitely deserves a few decades of jail time. At this point, her plane falling out of the sky and dumping her on a desert island felt more of an inevitability than a huge surprise. So yeah, she’s angry. She’s jaded and bitter and resentful. This world has been cruel to her. She expects nothing more from it. 

There’s a lot of time to reflect on this island. There’s a lot of sitting around, doing nothing, waiting; for rescue or death, whichever comes first. They find a bag of Takis and it feels, for a moment, like their luck might be changing; but Toni has a unique propensity for ruining things and their shelter-building competition gets taken over by petty schoolyard politics. She hears them scoff as she storms off. She just can’t help herself.

On bad days, she lives like she’s in a dream, sometimes so untethered that it feels like nothing would really matter. No consequences. It is both comforting and terrifying.

//

Nora tells Shelby that she’s been misinterpreting the Death of a Salesman monologue; that it’s about Biff telling his father that he wants his own authentic life, that he doesn’t want to live for him anymore. This discovery makes Shelby uncomfortable for a reason she can’t quite put her finger on and she gets caught off guard, mumbles something about disrespecting parents. Nora examines her with dark, intelligent eyes; Shelby’s skin prickles, but Nora can’t extract any more from her because Toni rounds the corner, laden with chopped bamboo. 

Nora and Martha are afraid of Toni. They’re nervous, scared to move too fast or say the wrong thing because Toni is a ticking bomb, volatile, unstable. They’re fighting about the shelter and Shelby watches Toni nearly boil over, jaw flexing and shoulders stiffening. However, Martha knows how to play the peacemaker (she’s clearly well practised), and Shelby notes with interest the quick flash of betrayal across Toni’s face (quickly stifled) when Martha takes Shelby’s side.

Toni’s emotions are too big for her body; she’s crass and emotional and it makes Shelby bristle with annoyance.

(She’d go to her grave before she admit to herself that this fire, this heat, makes Toni completely magnetic)

Toni can see straight through Shelby. Nobody is ever actually that perfect, and no way is Shelby actually the ray of fucking sunshine she makes herself out to be. She’s real, okay? She does family, she does Jesus, she does pageants. Martha is naive; a blind-eyed Samson, starstruck by this insane persona that Shelby somehow pulls off. It’s infuriating. These last six days, she’s kept catching Shelby looking at her, green eyes cooly lingering on her for just longer than necessary. It’s maddening. She can sense something in Shelby that nobody, possibly not even Shelby herself, has seen; a visceral anger, an inward frustration. Toni can see it because she has that familiar deep-seated fury; for her, it’s all-consuming, but with Shelby, it seems to be buried deep, hidden behind perfect white teeth and french-tipped nails. Toni doesn’t care to find out what might be driving it; she just keeps trying to get a rise out of her because she feels like she owes it to herself to shatter the mask, to expose the real Shelby. This perfect, blonde, white girl has obviously never experienced a single ounce of struggle, and Toni’s got more than enough of that to go around; a little redistribution is in order. She’s going to take such huge, petty satisfaction in finally making Shelby crack. 

She steps away from the others, goes to cool down, because seeing Martha so under Shelby’s spell is almost too much to bear. She supposes she should’ve anticipated that Shelby would come running after her, pretending that she actually cares about Toni, spouting her bullshit about religion and faith and God knows what. It’s like she exists solely to antagonize her.

‘Hell is where the Lord sends us to try and teach us something,’ 

Shelby says it so sanctimoniously that Toni wants to scream.

She notices a heart drawn on Shelby’s back, perfectly between her shoulder blades, in Martha’s pink sunscreen stick. Her hands flex involuntarily.

‘I know he’s trying to teach me patience’

Shelby fights to keep her face and her smile neutral. Toni is so obtuse, so stubborn, that Shelby would pay to… she’s not sure. She’s not had much practise in vengeance.

‘I do bug you. I knew it,’ Toni says with an impossibly smug smile. Shelby thinks of two ways to shut Toni up; the first, she’d rather die than act upon, so she goes with the second. Toni and her come to shoves, kicks, and seventeen years of practising forgiveness and patience nearly fly out the window because this girl gets under her skin like nobody else has ever done. 

(She doesn’t know that later, she’ll wake up in the small hours of the morning, breathing ragged and heart thumping, from a dream where she  _ does _ go for the first option.)

So they fight, and Shelby says some real ugly things.

And Toni rises to it because she can’t  _ not _ . So it goes like this: she smashes their shelter and she implores, begs Martha to see that Shelby is all smoke and mirrors and everybody looks at her like they’re afraid of her and it feels all too familiar, so boringly similar to how she ruined the first good thing that ever kissed her on a windy Tuesday in a beat up old car. 

//

Martha tells her through gritted teeth that all she does is destroy and break and take and take. Toni’s heart breaks, cleaves down the middle, because she truly can’t stand it; losing Martha means she is adrift, completely alone. A few days later, when those fucking mussels nearly kill them, Toni’s emotions run away from her again. Her rage burns through her like a wildfire but she’s crying, too; hot, angry tears drip into the sand and she cradles an unconscious Martha in her arms and the most good she’s ever known could die because of Shelby, fucking Shelby, who says nothing, who’s always just  _ looking _ at her with those impassible, green eyes. Toni realises that if they all die here, on this godforsaken island, there will be nobody at home to mourn her, to miss her; her foster family will miss the monthly cheque and her basketball team will find another captain, and her life will have been utterly inconsequential; her life will have amounted to nothing. 

On bad days, the world feels like a bleak, empty wasteland. Toni doesn’t wish for a better world for anyone. 

  
  



End file.
